The Easiest Loaf of Bread You'll Ever Bake

hey folks it's Martin today we're going to dial things back a little bit we're going to make the easiest loaf of bread you'll ever bake if you've never made bread before start here [Music] okay so let's mix this bread today I'm measuring the ingredients using cup measures it's what most of us have it's what I grew up with as a professional I tend to use a scale predominantly but today we're going to use cup measures because I think that's what everybody has and I'm going to show you how to do that in the most accurate way possible most people when they go to measure flour what they do is they take their cup measure and they go into the bag and they make sure you know they scoop it and then they like shake it to get it and then they're like yeah that's pretty good the problem is that there's a lot of flour in this cup measure right now because I scooped and sort of compressed it as I took it out this is a heavy cup of flour having a heavy cup of flour is going to throw off the ratios of what I want to have in this dough and so the better method for getting flour out of the bag is to do as follows first fluff the flour a little bit we're just going to sort of lighten it in the bag we're mixing it with a little bit of air and it basically means that one cup of flour will have a little bit less flour in it than it might if we just compress the cup as we measure okay step two so then I dump it into the cup as opposed to pushing the cup into the flour and then I sweep it so I just level it off and that is my one cup of flour if you have cups and teaspoons you want to use those I showed you how to do that with the fluff dump sweep if you have a scale use that 540 grams of flour in the bowl and now let's get our other ingredients in there I need a tablespoon of sugar and I'm going to use my volumetric measure and then two and a half teaspoons of salt one two and then two and a quarter of yeast let's pause for just a second because water is really key not only for the way that it hydrates flour it's what allows everything to come together and form a dough the other thing that water does is it affects the temperature of the dough and as we know bread is a fermented or leavened product if we use really cold water those yeasts are not happy if we use water that's boiling those yeasts are not going to be happy what we want is water that's in this sort of like Goldilocks zone of comfort it feels good it's slightly warm we're cool in here today so it almost feels like bath water it's a soothing temperature that's like my best sort of description that I can apply to it so no cold water no super hot water go someplace in the middle usually that's about you know around like 100 degrees maybe a little below maybe a little above okay so slightly warm and then I'm just going to stir to combine so I'm just bringing this together for just a second in the bowl so let me just pause for a second and describe what this dough feels like so it's slightly tacky it's a little bit sticky not super sticky so kneading is one way that we can develop strength in dough and what's the point of that the point of that is that strength is what allows our dough or our loaf to rise to its fullest potential so how do we need we put a little bit of flour down and I'm going to take this dough out of the bowl so you can see how if the dough sticks to the bench a little bit like that you can see how a bench scraper can be handy just to sort of clean it up piece of dough down and I like to press and then turn so I'm pressing and then turning and this might stick a little bit and that's okay you're going to see how I deal with that so I'm pressing and turning I'm pressing and sort of smearing a little bit and if it sticks some just go in with your bench scraper that's okay A little bit of flour put it back down you can watch this dough go from sort of Shaggy and not terribly homogeneous to something that looks smooth with a nice pretty surface to it so this is about three minutes in and the dough is not sticking to things it's it's less tacky it has more strength and I'm just going to continue a little bit see how it almost bounces back it's almost rubbery I've developed that strength in that dough so it's got that sort of aspect to it okay so dough is finished with its sort of kneading which is that process which develops strength and now what we need to do is get some flavor in there right now we have good things we have flour water salt yeast a little bit of sugar delicious things but fermentation the process of rising is actually where the flavor and Aroma of bread is sort of developing and so we need to take time for that takes a couple hours this recipe calls for one to two hours and so I'm gonna put just a drop of oil in a bowl and you could use the bowl that you mixed initially in you don't have to get a fresh bowl and then place the dough in there I put it in and then I turn it once just to make sure that it's sort of moist on all sides and then and this is important you want to cover the bowl and you could either do that with a bowl cover like this or you could use a sheet tray you know baking tray something like that and then you want to put it in a place which is conducive to rising and so if it's cold day you don't want to put it outside on the porch you know you want to put it in a place which is warm you can put it in the oven with the light on or find a warm spot in your house where it can rise the dough should feel coddled or swaddled a little bit it should feel like it's in an ambient condition which is you know I would say around 72 up to 75 depending on where you are okay so happy nappy sleep well we'll see you in one to two hours so the dough has risen it's been about an hour a little bit over in a nice comforting warm ambient condition if I were to press on it it kind of holds the impression of my finger it feels marshmallowy almost and that's a good term to sort of look for when we go and we're poofing the final loaf as well and so I'm going to put just a little bit of flour down and it should just fall out real nicely look how beautiful that is so just a little bit of flour on top and I'm just going to Pat it to remove any large bubbles and then I'm just going to divide it into two pieces you could use a scale and get an exact divide and you know most the time that's what I'm into but we're keeping it easy here so I'm just going to eyeball it and just roughly get it into two pieces and that's pretty close that one looks a little bit small take a little bit from that guy right over there good okay padding gently to remove any bubbles and then I'm going to fold it into a letter I'm padding to seal that's about it I'm going to elongate it just a little bit right now it's just like a little bit stubby and so in order to elongate it I'm gonna just get some of my bench flour out of the way if you've got too much flour on the surface one of two things could happen one the the raw flour will get incorporated into the loaf and then when you slice it you see this sort of like white streak we don't want that the other thing is that too much flour on the bench sort of makes it sort of that it slides around too much when we're trying to shape it or roll it back and forth and what I want to do is just elongate this slightly just out a little bit and so in order to do that I'm just going to roll it back and forth with both my hands that's literally it we've shaped our first loaf done and now I'm going to put them on a tray and we're going to let them fill with air again that does a couple things one it allows them more time to gain more flavor and two it also will help them with their sort of final size when they come out of the oven so we're going to let them rise one more time and we're going to let them rise on this sheet tray and I'm going to put a little bit of cornmeal down you could also use semolina if you wanted to so just a little bit of cornmeal and the cornmeal is for flavor it's for a little bit of crunch and it'll also help the lows release when they're done baking one loaf and the second Loaf and I'm trying to kind of make them roughly the same size the reason for that is that as they bake if they're the same size they'll bake more evenly so that's why I have some attention to detail in terms of the shaping and the sort of equal size of Loaves and while they're proofing we want to again put them in an ambient condition which is comforting for them which is moderately warm 72 75 degrees if possible and cover them if the skin dries out the bread will not be as good so cover them a food safe plastic bag a sheet of cling film something like that in order to keep them from drying out on the surface okay we'll see you soon okay so these lows have risen a little bit it's been 40 minutes 45 minutes something like that basically what I'm looking for is for them to inflate slightly and to feel like they have lightened like they're slightly filled with air they're not so proofed or so sort of Pumped up that when I press them my finger holds the indentation it's it's popping back just a little bit so this to me says that we're in the window we're about where they need to be in order to bake and so I've got my oven preheated and I'm going to dust them with a little bit of flour and then I'm going to score them with this knife I'm using a serrated knife which I think does a better job and I'm just going to be quick and that's basically helping the loaf to expand in a controlled way because we know that once it goes in the oven it's going to grow some more right so cutting it is not only decorative but it's also functional so here are loaves they're well colored they Rose well in the oven you'll see on the video that we steamed a little bit I added a little bit of steam during the baking process which not only helps with Browning it also helps with the quality of the crust it's not entirely necessary don't worry about that if you are new to this process and you want to sort of keep it streamlined you can bake without Steam and it's just fine so I'm excited to cut into this we're going to give it a few minutes don't cut that bread as soon as it comes out give it a it's still baking it still needs time for some of the moisture that's on the interior of the loaf to migrate out it's still baking right now even though it's not in the oven so let it cool down at least you know half an hour to an hour or something like that foreign less than an afternoon's worth of work we've got a delicious beautiful loaf of bread love the color love the flavor the crumb is not super widely open it's about what I'd expect for a dove this hydration and consistency it's easy it's approachable if you haven't made bread before try this out it's the easiest loaf of bread you'll ever make if you haven't made bread this is a great place to start remember the things that we discussed measure your ingredients as accurately as possible make sure to warm that water up and manage your fermentation a little bit and then once it's proofed go ahead and load bake it fully for best color and then cool it a little bit slice it up and enjoy this beautiful thing that can be made in the space of an afternoon cheers and happy baking

Channel: King Arthur Baking Company

Views: 145,544

Keywords: baking, king arthur flour, flour

Id: EIeK4a20RL8

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023